New Delhi, June 11 : BJP president Rajnath Singh Tuesday said that L. K. Advani, who had resigned from all leadership positions, has decided to accept the parliamentary board's request to stay in the core party bodies.

"Advanji has said that any decision of the party he will accept," Rajnath Singh said quoting Advani, who quit Monday.

Advani, who had resigned Monday from the parliamentary board, election committee and national executive, was not present at the brief press conference.

Mumbai, June 11 : Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha, one of the best known Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from Bihar, has reportedly thrown his weight behind BJP patriarch L. K. Advani, who relinquished all party posts after Narendra Modi was named the lead campaigner for the 2014 general elections.

It's an open war in the BJP's ranks with prominent party members sharply divided in their loyalty towards Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Modi, respectively.

According to an informed source, Sinha has taken extreme umbrage to Modi being projected as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.

All my life I have found working for the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party a matter of great pride and endless satisfaction for myself.

For sometime I have been finding it difficult to reconcile either with the current functioning of the party, or the direction in which it is going. I no longer have the feeling that this is the same idealistic party created by Dr (Shyama Prasad) Mookerji, Pandit Deen Dayalji
(Upadhyay), Nanaji (Deshmukh) and (Atal Bihari) Vajpayeeji whose sole concern was the country and its people.

New Delhi, June 10 : With Narendra Modi heading the BJP's Lok Sabha campaign panel, the stage is set for a virtual showdown between the Gujarat chief minister and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi next year.

While Modi was named the Bharatiya Janata Party's central poll campaign committee head Sunday, Gandhi was picked in November last year to head the Congress election coordination committee.

This happened two months before Gandhi was made the vice president, second only to his mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi.

New Delhi, June 10 : Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj Monday expressed "surprise" at BJP patriarch L. K. Advani's decision to resign from all party posts but said she was confident she would be able to convince him to take back his resignation.

"I am going to his house and will talk to him and I am sure we will be able to convince him. I have spoken to him over phone and told him that I am coming to see him," she told reporters here.

"I was surprised at his decision," she said, adding that she was confident that she would convince him to take back his resignation.

Thiruvananthapuram, June 10 : Speaking for the first time about the controversy over his induction into the Kerala cabinet, state Congress unit chief Ramesh Chennithala said Monday that the party high command would come up with a solution.

"I have not gone after any post and all these years my party has given me posts at the appropriate time. Today, the matter is before them, and at the appropriate time, they will come with a solution," Chennithala said while addressing media persons here Monday.

Hyderabad, June 8 : Finally acting against the rebels, Andhra Pradesh assembly speaker Saturday disqualified 15 members of the legislative assembly belonging to the ruling Congress and the main opposition TDP for violating party whips.

Speaker N. Manohar, who heard the petitions moved by the two parties during the last few weeks, announced his decision Saturday evening. Nine of those disqualified belong to the Congress while six others are members of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

The speaker took the action under Rule 2(1)(b) of the Tenth Schedule of the constitution for voting against the party whip.

Panaji, June 8 : Amid reports of rift within the BJP especially after L. K. Advani's decision to skip the national executive meeting, party president Rajnath Singh said the conclave would end on a positive note and every one will go back "happy".

In his inaugural address to the national executive meeting here, Rajnath Singh said everyone will go home "happy, energised and enthusiastic", party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters.

Panaji, June 7 : As BJP leaders slipped into their first huddle on day one of a key party conclave, a string of leaders already appear to have given Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi a thumbs up as far as the road to the Lok Sabha polls is concerned.

The man who set the ball rolling was Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who said: "Modi can catapult BJP to power. He will take us closer to government formation at the centre."

Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP national general secretary and newly appointed in-charge of the party in Bihar, used military analogy to explain the importance of Modi to the electoral fortunes of the party.

New Delhi, June 6 : The BJP's emphatic victory in six bypolls in Gujarat has added to the clamour in the party for a bigger national role for Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and indications are that he would head the 2014 polls campaign committee.

A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said Thursday that at the party's national executive meet in Goa over the weekend Modi is likely to be installed the chief of the campaign committee as there was pressure for this from the cadres.

"A decision is likely to be taken," the leader told IANS, declining to be named.

New Delhi, June 6 : Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to be appointed in charge of BJP's 2014 poll campaign at its upcoming national executive meeting in Goa as it would not discuss leadership issues, party leader Yashwant Sinha said Thursday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national executive will meet in Goa June 7-9.

Caracas, June 6 : Venezuela and the US have agreed to find ways to improve their diplomatic relations which have been tense since August 2010, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said.

The agreement was reached Wednesday during Jaua's meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a Organization of American States (OAS) general assembly meeting held in Antigua, Guatemala, reported Xinhua.

"We trust that the meeting with John Kerry will mark the beginning of a good relation of respect between Venezuela and the United States," Jaua said in a statement released by Venezuela's official media.

Islamabad, June 6 : The "tables have turned" in Pakistan, said a leading daily Thursday pointing out that Nawaz Sharif is again occupying the prime minister's chair while erstwhile military strongman General Pervez Musharraf is under arrest

Nawaz Sharif Wednesday became the first man to be elected prime minister in the country for a third time.

United Nations, March 29 : UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Friday said that he is "deeply disappointed" at the failure of the final UN conference to adopt a treaty by consensus which would help regulate the multi-billion-dollar international arms trade.

"The secretary-general is deeply disappointed with the failure of the Final United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty to reach an agreement on a treaty text," said a statement issued here by Ban's spokesman.

Johannesburg, March 29 : Former South African president Nelson Mandela was responding to medical treatment for a recurrence of a lung infection, the presidency said late Thursday.

The 94-year-old, who served as South African president from 1994 to 1999, was hospitalised Wednesday night. He spent 27 years in prison before being elected the country's first black president after the end of apartheid.

Tbilisi, March 26 : Lawmakers in Georgia have approved changes to the constitution that will reduce President Mikheil Saakashvili's authority and tip the balance of power to the prime minister.

The changes, which include stripping the president of the right to dismiss the government without parliamentary approval, mark a new victory for billionaire prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose Georgian Dream coalition triumphed in the October elections.